This Article tells the forgotten story of the Black Conventions of the Reconstruction era, examining convenings of Black Americans across the nation during the time when the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were under consideration. Invoking the promises of liberty and equality contained in the Declaration of Independence, these conventions insisted on Black Americans’ right to respect and dignity, fought for control of their bodies and their right to be full members of the body politic, including at the polls, and demanded an end to racial prejudice and violence that kept them in a subjugated status. Through their relentless activism, Black Americans repeatedly pressed white Americans to make the United States into a multiracial democracy that guaranteed fundamental rights, protection, and equal citizenship as an American birthright. In large measure, the Amendments that produced our Second Founding bore the imprint of this constitutional activism.

Read the full abstract on the Legal Theory Blog, and read David’s article here.